Improving vaccination rates by connecting families to community resources

We developed a social needs intervention (the PHASE program) in a Midwestern, low-income, pediatric clinic to screen for financial needs, food insecurity, housing insecurity, and other needs and connect families to clinic and community-based social resources. We measured the impact of our intervention on adherence with recommended childhood immunizations. While PHASE-enrolled patients were overdue on 34% more vaccines at the time of enrollment, by the second year their vaccine status had improved to the point that the intervention and comparison groups were indistinguishable. Most notably, at 18 months, PHASE patients were overdue for 0.15 less vaccines than at the time of enrollment, while at the same time, non-participants were overdue for 0.32 more vaccines than at the time of enrollment-a statistically significant difference of 0.47 less overdue vaccines. This suggests that families that are connected with short and long-term resources can have an improvement in immunization adherence.